When you follow a community, or other content, the notifications show up in your News Feed on your Home page, making it easier to track what has changed in your selected communities. You can also configure your preferences from “Settings” to determine from which communities you would like to receive content and email notifications, and how frequently.

2. It looks like following a community generates an automatic daily update, is this the de facto for all communities?

The defaults are configurable, and in Connections are located. Another point is that you can override your settings for specific content – as you may want a daily newsletter for the Communities you are following, but want an individual notification each time someone edits a particular wiki page within that Community.

3. What are the main differences between joining a community and following? What are the added benefits? Are users encouraged to do both?

When you join a community, you have access and you can participate. When you are following a community, you get the added capability of notifications that let you know what is happening in the community even if you haven’t visited it recently. Whether someone should do both depends on how they prefer to work. If you are working in a community all the time, you might not want the notifications, because you are already seeing new content as it is created. If you want notifications to trigger when you visit a community, or to lead you to items that you are going to take action on, then you want to follow it.

4. If I’m already a member, why would I want to follow the same community?

Take this example, in a community that is being used to run a project—you may want to know each time certain events occur in the community — because they are the trigger for you to go to the community and take action.

An example of when you may not want to follow community is one that serves as a reference/resource of information, and when you want to interact with it, you go and read what is there and contribute your information. You would be a member, but perhaps not follow it.

5. How are previously established networks with coworkers in previous versions of Connections affected by the new ability to “follow” an individual in the recent upgrade?

Your network is a two-way flow and conveys that there is a mutual and visible acknowledgement of that relationship. If you are Network Contacts – you see each others updates, and other people see that you are in each others network. Following is quite different.

If you follow someone – you see their updates, but they don’t see yours unless they choose to follow you. You can see who follows you, and receive a notification that you are being followed. Other people don’t see this information. Following conveys an interest, not a relationship.

6. How do the email preferences affect moderated communities, or communities that send emails via the “mail community” function?

These email preferences aren’t related to the “mail community: function in a community. They are related to content you have created and content you are following.

7. If users have difficulty with bookmarking tools and images, is there an easy fix?

If users have issues with bookmarking and adding new images, it may be related to their browser cache. Clearing out their browser cache should resolve the issue.

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IBM Connections 3.0.1 provides companies with the tools needed to help teams accomplish their business objectives whether they are located locally or distributed geographically.

New capabilities

Moderating community content

Community owners are provided with new capabilities for the moderation of a community’s content. These capabilities help community owners realize the benefits of active and vibrant community participation, while having the confidence of being able to moderate the content that appears in a community.

Enhancing communities with video and photo sharing

The Media Gallery feature permits the sharing of videos and photos with a community. These capabilities can help attract more visitors to a community by creating a more compelling and satisfying experience for community members.

Generating ideas within a community

The Ideation Blog feature is designed to help simplify the sharing of ideas within a community, voting on the ideas and moving the best ideas forward as projects. These new capabilities can, for example, help gather ideas from customers in a structured manner, and facilitate turning the best ideas into new services and offerings.

Integration with Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repositories

The ECM integration helps users to store, access, and edit documents residing in FileNet® Content Manager and IBM Content Manager from within a Community.

IBM Lotus Connections is being renamed to IBM Connections. IBM Connections consists of social software that is enabled to take advantage of the broad capabilities in IBM’s software portfolio. For example, Connections is now packaged with certain IBM Cognos Business Intelligence offerings to support integration between the two products. This naming change better aligns with that effort to create IBM solutions which involve multiple brands designed to address our customers specific business needs.

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This is a demo video of IBM Connections 3.0.1, which improves media sharing, content moderation, and idea sharing. IBM Connections 3.0.1 provides companies with the tools needed to help teams accomplish their business objectives whether they are located locally or distributed geographically.